Slippage
by Daisee Chain
Summary: "You really did turn into a real girl didn't you?" Xander, Hush.


He looked at her as if he didn't understand.  
  
"The peanut butter", she stated, "the jar you were supposed to buy on your way back home."  
  
"Ahn, honey. I'm tired", he said emphasizing the tired part. "I've worked all day. Constructing things. You know, building type construction. Sometimes little things like that slip my mind."  
  
"Sure they do! The things that I want slip your mind. Not the things that you want. Not the things that Willow wants. Not the things that Buffy wants." Her voice was shrill now. It had taken her 15 minutes to compose herself enough to be able to have a calm reasonable discussion. And suddenly she was a shrew. Like the women in those Shakespeare plays. How did that happen anyway?  
  
Xander was looking at her warily, arms up and palms out as if to say "Hey, don't take it out on me lady", but what came out of his mouth was "Look, if you want me to go back out and get the peanut butter, I'll get the peanut butter. Crunchy or smooth?"  
  
He didn't understand. How could she make him understand? He was so infuriating. She just wanted to hurl something at him, like a jar of peanut butter, only she didn't have one handy. She huffed instead.  
  
"Forget it. I don't want it anymore."  
  
"Then what's with all the pressure?" he asked confusedly.  
  
"Because you didn't get it, which means you just don't get it!" She was crying now. She could feel the salt water edging out of her eyes and falling gently down her face. A drop of it stopped at the top of her lip, clung for a moment as if resentful of letting go, then finally gave in and dropped into the chasm onto her tongue, letting her taste her own bitterness.  
  
She saw the moment Xander gave in. The gauze curtain drawing over his eyes, his shoulders drooping in a way that told her quite clearly, he was leaving her to it, whatever it might be.  
  
"If you make up your mind what you want, let me know. I'll be in the bedroom getting changed."   
  
She watched him retreat to the safety of another room. Any other room.   
  
Men, she thought as if it were a swear word. He can help fight demons, armegeddons, and the Watchers' Council, but try having a discussion about relationships and he runs screaming as fast as he can go in the opposite direction.  
  
She yanked her apron off the hook and started angrily rummaging in drawers and cupboards. A pot hit the stove with an almighty thump. She clanged a metal serving spoon into the pot, then picked up a knife, but decided, on second thoughts, to put it gently back in the knife rack.  
  
In hindsight she supposed she was being a bit hard on him. He probably didn't realize they'd been having a relationship discussion. She'd been meaning to bring it round to that. Open up the dialogue with some sandwiches; give him a little food so his blood sugar wouldn't be running so low that he'd be churlish and uncooperative. Which is where the plan had begun to unravel. There had been nothing in the house to put into a sandwich, so she'd phoned him and asked him to get the peanut butter on his way back. He'd told her he would. He'd promised her he would. And then he'd come home empty handed.  
  
It was a simple thing really. Just a tiny request. Not like the orders she'd once imperiously shot off without a second thought. She'd waited all day for him. Oh sure, she worked her ass off in the Magic box, but that was really only filling in time till she got to see him. The money she earned there, while still useful, no longer held the allure it once had. It was after all, only a means to an end. And she could never prove to anyone outside the Scooby gang that she had earnt it. She was an ex-demon, born human centuries earlier, had never been registered on a census. Had never technically arrived in this country. So she had no social security number. So she could never have a bank account. Never collect welfare if she needed it. Never get a pension. Never. She was a nobody here. More invisible than an illegal alien. Could you be more invisible, she wondered? Or was that an impossibility. If you were invisible, you just were. Surely you couldn't be more invisible or less invisible?   
  
She shrugged and threw open the fridge door, peering into it, as if that might resolve the question of her opacity. But the eggs remained stoically silent.   
  
She pulled tomatoes out and dropped them onto the chopping board over by the stovetop. Not bothering to wash them, she pulled out the knife again, and started hacking away at the blood red bodies. It reminded her a little of the old days. She thought of them often, particularly during arguments. She knew she oughtn't think of them as "The Good Old Days", but she couldn't help it. She watched as the tomatoes transformed themselves in her mind to plump, pink, human body parts, oozing blood and guts and pips. Ok. Not pips. Just blood and guts. Red juice ran over her fingers, becoming blood, becoming juice again.  
  
She paused mid slice. The flashbacks were fewer these days, but they could still catch her unexpectedly. And the paranoia never really left. She tried to channel it into aggressive marketing strategies, boring Xander and company to tears. Not even Xander seemed to understand its necessity. That the alternative could be literally agonizing for all of them.   
  
Slice and dice, slice and dice. She was really just a giant slice and dice machine like the one advertised on the shopping channel for 13.95 (accessories included, plus free set of steak knives). Hundreds of years slicing and dicing had prepared her for... slicing and dicing. Without the messy stains and the tormented crying this time.   
  
How had she gotten here anyway? She'd ordered death and wholesale destruction on a scale her new friends hadn't quite grasped even now. Tortured and tormented people, if she was honest, just for the hell of it. She certainly hadn't had any other hobbies to keep her occupied. And now she chopped vegetables for a man who couldn't remember to bring home peanut butter. There was something wrong with the order of things here. Surely you were supposed to become more powerful, not less, as you got older.  
  
The how of ending up human, was easy. One necklace, slightly broken, good for half hearted attempts at cursing rabbits, going cheap. But the how of ending up a housefrau? A thousand years of vengeance, to end up right back where she started. An ordinary human woman, in love with an ordinary human man, slowly losing herself to him.  
  
Because that was what this, and the tomatoes, all really boiled down to. Independence. Taken from her forcefully when her necklace had been destroyed. Slowly and deliberately destroyed in that joke of a school system. Whittled away from her piece by piece in her life with Xander. She loved Xander. She truly did. But every day that he made huge strides in his independence, she had to fight just that little bit harder to keep from losing what little she had left. She was working and bleeding her soul away for him, and for the cause. And he was working and bleeding his soul away for them. Not for her.   
  
Carrots, onions, olive oil followed the tomatoes into the pot. Let simmer for 15 minutes. Well, she supposed she had been by now. Better go make up. Which they would. He would kiss her, and she would feel that jolt run down her spine again, just like always, and she would still be mad at him, but she would give him what he wanted. Time, space, some of her money, because it was whatever he wanted, even when he didn't give the same back in return, not even peanut butter, but she would never, ever, walk away. Because really, what did she have left to walk toward? 


End file.
